Friday, March 31, 2006

First Amendment Vs. Espionage Act

Although the AIPAC espionage case deals with people operating ultimately for the benefit of a foreign nation, the press (and now the trial judge) is painting the case as a freedom of the press issue.

The federal judge overseeing prosecution of two former lobbyists charged with receiving and transmitting national defense information under the 1917 Espionage Act has given the government until today to respond to defense claims that the statute is unconstitutionally vague and overbroad and may violate the First Amendment...

The case is drawing the attention of First Amendment attorneys because both (U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III) and prosecutors have noted that the two lobbyists -- in receiving and disseminating the information -- are doing what journalists, academics and experts at think tanks do every day.


Floyd Abrams, a New York attorney who has represented the New York Times in a variety of high-profile cases, said in an interview this week that the AIPAC case "is the single most dangerous case for free speech and free press." Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, wrote on his Web site this week: "Anything other than a dismissal of the charges would mark a dramatic shift in national security law and a significant reduction in First Amendment protections."...


Judge Ellis also brings up several other tangential issues:

Ellis said the government must respond to the defense argument that the statute, which does not define "national defense information," is so vague "that men of common intelligence necessarily must guess at its meaning and differ as to its application."

The judge also told prosecutors to deal with another defense argument: that the statute does not provide "fair warning," since this is the first time it has been applied to civilians. Due process "bars courts from applying a novel construction of a criminal statute to conduct that neither the statute nor any prior judicial decision has fairly disclosed to be within its scope," Ellis said...

Ellis also raised the question of what would happen if people to whom Rosen passed the defense information relayed it to someone else. "Would it [the criminal liability] continue to apply ad infinitum?" he asked. DiGregory replied, "That's a difficult question to answer in the abstract."

Fear that this administration may start aggressively pursuing journalists for trafficking in secrets is not unreasonable given the curious practices now accepted in the national security environment in post 9-11 Washington.

But, desire to avoid unwelcome precedent notwithstanding, this attempt to conflate journalism and spying reeks of an intentional attempt to protect Israel.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Bush Knowingly Lied About Aluminum Tubes in 2003 SOTU

A new article by Murray Waas in the National Journal shows that President Bush's 2003 State of the Union claims about Iraq's aluminum tubes being for nuclear weapons production was known to him to be a highly disputed piece of intelligence.

A dissent (or alternate view) from the State and Energy Department's intelligence arms saying that the tubes could not be used in a uranium enrichment centrifuge was included in the one-page President's Summary of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE).

Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration. Rove expressed his concerns shortly after an informal review of classified government records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address -- that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon -- might not be true, according to government records and interviews.

Hadley was particularly concerned that the public might learn of a classified one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, specifically written for Bush in October 2002. The summary said that although "most agencies judge" that the aluminum tubes were "related to a uranium enrichment effort," the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department's intelligence branch "believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons."...


For one, Hadley's review concluded that Bush had been directly and repeatedly apprised of the deep rift within the intelligence community over whether Iraq wanted the high-strength aluminum tubes for a nuclear weapons program or for conventional weapons.


For another, the president and others in the administration had cited the aluminum tubes as the most compelling evidence that Saddam was determined to build a nuclear weapon -- even more than the allegations that he was attempting to purchase uranium...


"Presidential knowledge was the ball game," says a former senior government official outside the White House who was personally familiar with the damage-control effort. "The mission was to insulate the president. It was about making it appear that he wasn't in the know. You could do that on Niger. You couldn't do that with the tubes."


On July 18, the Bush administration declassified a relatively small portion of the NIE and held a press briefing to discuss it, in a further effort to show that the president had used the Niger information only because the intelligence community had vouched for it. Reporters noted that an "alternate view" box in the NIE stated that the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (known as INR) believed that claims of Iraqi purchases of uranium from Africa were "highly dubious" and that State and DOE also believed that the aluminum tubes were "most likely for the production of artillery shells."


But White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett suggested that both the president and Rice had been unaware of this information: "They did not read footnotes in a 90-page document." Later, addressing the same issue, Bartlett said, "The president of the United States is not a fact-checker."


Because the Bush administration was able to control what information would remain classified, however, reporters did not know that Bush had received the President's Summary that informed him that both State's INR and the Energy Department doubted that the aluminum tubes were to be used for a nuclear-related purpose...


Later that summer, the Senate Intelligence Committee launched an investigation of intelligence agencies to determine why they failed to accurately assess that Saddam had no viable programs to develop chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons at the time of the U.S. invasion.


As National Journal first disclosed on its Web site on October 27, 2005, Cheney, Libby, and Cheney's current chief of staff, David Addington, rejected advice given to them by other White House officials and decided to withhold from the committee crucial documents that might have shown that administration claims about Saddam's capabilities often went beyond information provided by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Among those documents was the President's Summary of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate.


No wonder that the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by the odious Sen. Pat Roberts, has refused to conduct the Phase II investigation of the administration's misuse of intelligence to lure the nation into war on false pretenses.

Murray Waas also indicates in his fine article that the bizarre behavior of the administration in Plamegate can be logically explained as their energetic efforts to muddy the waters with the Niger uranium issue in order to obfuscate the more blatant cherry-picking of intelligence about the aluminum tubes.

U.S. Govt. Lawyers Gone Bad

The "war on terror" has inspired federal lawyers in at least two cases now to resort to unethical and potentially illegal tactics in order to administer what passes for justice these days.

The skullduggery involved in the Detroit prosecutions of alleged Muslim jihadists has been long public. The chickens are coming home to roost now for some of the government malefactors.

A former federal prosecutor and a State Department security officer were indicted yesterday on charges that they lied during a bungled terrorism trial in Detroit and then sought to cover up their deceptions once the case began to fall apart.

Former assistant U.S. attorney Richard G. Convertino, 45, and State Department special agent Harry R. Smith III, 49, were charged with conspiracy, obstruction of justice and making false statements in connection with the 2003 prosecution, according to an indictment handed up by a federal grand jury in Detroit...


Legal experts said yesterday that an indictment of a prosecutor for improper conduct in a federal courtroom is extraordinarily rare, if not unprecedented, in modern times.


"The charge is essentially that he prosecuted too aggressively and crossed the line," said Stephen Gillers, a New York University law professor who specializes in legal ethics. "This is simply astonishing."


Convertino also is charged with presenting false information at a sentencing hearing in a separate drug case to gain a light prison term for an informant...


Convertino led the prosecution of Karim Koubriti and three other North African immigrants, who were alleged to be part of a "sleeper operational combat cell." The government gained three convictions -- including two on terrorism charges -- but they were dismissed in 2004 after the Justice Department announced it had uncovered serious prosecutorial misconduct.


A report by a special Justice Department attorney assigned to review the case found that the prosecution had failed to turn over dozens of pieces of evidence to the defense. The "pattern of mistakes and oversights," along with possible misconduct, was so egregious that the government had little choice but to withdraw its case, his report said...


Convertino faces up to 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine, while Smith could be sentenced to 20 years behind bars and a $750,000 penalty.


The indictment alleges that, during the trial, Convertino concealed photographs taken by Smith and another State Department staff member of Queen Alia Hospital in Jordan. Convertino had alleged that the defendants made a casing sketch of the military hospital in preparation for a terrorist attack, and Smith testified that he had no photographs with which to compare the sketches.


But Justice investigators said later that Convertino knew U.S. officials had taken numerous photographs and that "it is difficult, if not impossible, to compare the . . . sketches with the photos and see a correlation."


Carla J. Martin, the government lawyer who is alleged to have coached witnesses in the sentencing trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, is facing a federal investigation of her own.


The U.S. attorney's office in Alexandria quite sensibly recused itself from the matter. The U.S. attorney in Philadelphia will be conducting the inquiry.

She was subpoenaed to appear in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on Monday to answer questions about her conduct, but the subpoena was quashed. In a closed hearing March 21, when U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema granted the request by defense lawyers to subpoena Martin, Brinkema disclosed the investigation.

"I am advised by the U.S. attorney's office that there very well may be a prosecution of her; at least they are looking at the possibility," Brinkema said. "I understand this office [the U.S. attorney's office in Alexandria] will recuse itself, and I think the Eastern District of Pennsylvania is going to handle it."


"That's correct, your honor," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert A. Spencer.

The rules for dealing with "terror" cases have clearly been loosened all across the board. NSA warrantless wiretapping, Geneva convention violations, including torture, detaining U.S. citizens without due process, establishing secret foreign prisons, etc.

What will come out next?

Maybe nothing. Although only the NSA controversy resulted from leaks, the crackdown on leakers and their contacts is well underway to stop any further revelations.

Bush Blames Saddam For Sectarian Violence in Iraq

This bit will have to be filed in our "rivers in Africa" department. President Bush alleged in a speech yesterday that Saddam Hussein is more responsible for Iraq's current sectarian violence than other developments of a more recent nature.

President Bush said Wednesday that Saddam Hussein, not continued U.S. involvement in Iraq, is responsible for ongoing sectarian violence that is threatening the formation of a democratic government.

Statements like that (coinciding with policies derived from such bullshittery) are the reason that nobody--not even the British--trusts the United States anymore.

In his third speech this month to bolster public support for the war, Bush worked to counter critics who say the U.S. presence in the wartorn nation is fueling the insurgency. Bush said that Saddam was a tyrant and used violence to exacerbate sectarian divisions to keep himself in power, and that as a result, deep tensions persist to this day...

"I want the Iraqi people to hear I've got great confidence in their capacity to self govern," Bush said. "I also want the Iraqi people to hear--it's about time you get a unity government going. In other words, Americans understand you're newcomers to the political arena. But pretty soon its time to shut her down and get governing."


"Newcomers to the political arena?" New to "Western-style democracy," maybe. Does he think that this ancient land has never had struggles over power and divisions over scarce resources, i.e., the actual stuff of politics?

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

The Karl Rove of Mesopotamia

The myth that the United States believes that Iraqis have the right to a government of their choice is exposed by a report in today's New York Times that says President Bush is the Karl Rove of Mesopotamia.

Or, at least thinks he is.

The American ambassador (Zalmay Khalilzad) has told Shiite officials that President Bush does not want the Iraqi prime minister to remain the country's leader in the next government, senior Shiite politicians said Tuesday.

It is the first time the Americans have directly expressed a preference in the furious debate over the country's top job, the politicians said, and it is inflaming tensions between the Americans and some Shiite leaders...


Mr. Khalilzad said Mr. Bush "doesn't want, doesn't support, doesn't accept" Mr. Jaafari as the next prime minister, according to Mr. Taki, a senior aide to Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the Shiite bloc. It was the first "clear and direct message" from the Americans on a specific candidate for prime minister, Mr. Taki said.


The Shiite bloc, which won a plurality in the parliamentary election in December, nominated Mr. Jaafari last month to retain his post for four more years...


American officials in Baghdad did not dispute the Shiite politicians' account of the conversation, though they would not discuss the details of the meeting. A spokeswoman for the American Embassy confirmed that Mr. Khalilzad met with Mr. Hakim on Saturday. But she declined to comment on what was said.


"The decisions about the choice of the prime minister are entirely up to the Iraqis," said the spokeswoman, Elizabeth Colton. "This will be an Iraqi decision."...


The Americans have harshly criticized the Jaafari government in recent months for supporting Shiite militias that have been fomenting sectarian violence and pushing Iraq closer to full-scale civil war.

Mr. Khalilzad has sharpened his criticism in the last week, saying the militias are now killing more people than the Sunni Arab-led insurgency. American officials have expressed growing concern that Mr. Jaafari is incapable of reining in the private armies, especially since Moqtada al-Sadr, the anti-American cleric who leads the most volatile militia, is Mr. Jaafari's most powerful backer.


Just last week, Ambassador Khalilzad was saying:

"I have been reduced -- and I am not complaining -- to an observer, which is a good thing," he said, dismissing the widely held belief that he is still the driving force for unity, cajoling rival groups to negotiate. "I think now I say that they are really politically moving toward a self-reliance."

It looks like someone was being diplomatic rather than truthful.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

"EXCUSE MATRIX" Info-Op Update

The DOD-directed info-op against Russia is showing signs of mismanagement barely four days into the effort. Defense is unable to get all of the uniformed military commands to work from the same playbook.

The U.S. military's Central Command said yesterday it has not opened an investigation into whether sources inside the command leaked details of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq to Russian officials, and distanced itself from captured Iraqi documents that contain the allegations...

A Central Command official said the command takes "all matters of operational security seriously" but was not probing the allegations...


In e-mailed statements in response to questions,
Centcom cast doubt upon the validity of the captured Iraqi documents: "It's important to remember that the information came from an Iraqi intelligence report.

"Central command does not vouch for the document's accuracy or authenticity," the statement said...


Such views contrast
with those of the authors of the 210-page Iraqi Perspectives Project study released Friday by the U.S. Joint Forces Command in Norfolk. They said they believe the Iraqi documents are authentic. Retired Lt. Col. Kevin M. Woods, the project director, said he had "no reason to doubt the Iraqi documents."...

The Central Command spokesman, said
no one in his office knew of the existence of the Iraqi documents before the study's release on Friday, and that it was "highly possible" the military released them without prior vetting by Central Command.

The editorial page of the Washington Post proves today that it is still on board with the anti-Russia propaganda program, itself a sideshow (and liability) to the larger anti-Iran information operation.

"I do think we have to look at the documents and look very carefully," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. "But I don't want of jump out ahead and start making accusations about what the Russians may or may not have known." Fair enough, but a Pentagon study has already been through at least part of that exercise. It found no reason to doubt the documents' authenticity.

The news that Moscow would have helped Saddam Hussein fight U.S. forces might be unwelcome to those administration officials who still try to portray Mr. Putin as a partner of the West and a worthy host for the next summit of the Group of Eight nations. But it shouldn't be surprising. As has been well documented, Russia did its best to weaken and then break the sanctions regime imposed on Iraq, and then to prevent the 2003 invasion. In exchange it reaped lucrative economic concessions from Saddam Hussein, including the payment of large bribes to senior officials and politicians.


Ms. Rice and other Putin apologists ignore all this in part because they believe Russia will be helpful in stopping Iran's nuclear program. But Russia hasn't been helpful. Since its compromise offer to allow Iran to enrich uranium in Russian facilities failed to gain traction, it has dedicated itself to blocking concerted action by the United States and its European allies in the U.N. Security Council. Meanwhile it is discussing the sale to Iran of surface-to-air missiles.
As Mr. Putin knows, Iran wants those weapons in the event its drive to obtain nuclear bombs eventually leads to a military confrontation -- with the United States. But the possible consequences of bolstering the defenses of a U.S enemy may not deter him. After all, he has suffered none for Russia's actions in Iraq.

The lack of professionalism in executing the EXCUSE MATRIX info-op comes from ignoring one of the oldest rules in the business.

You never want to have too many cooks in the kitchen.

Monday, March 27, 2006

Warning About Iranian Conservative Extremists

The people surrounding new Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are so dangerously militant that even the conservative mullahs feel uneasy doing business with them.

Or so goes the newest salvo in the anti-Iran information operation.

Iranian politics has shifted so sharply to the right that some traditional conservatives are warning of the dangers of radicalism.

With reformists sidelined and Ahmadinejad setting a strident new tone on the global stage, figures from the extreme right of Iran's political spectrum are defining the terms of political debate in the country. In remarks that set off a domestic firestorm, a senior cleric close to the new president suggested in January that Iranian voters were largely irrelevant because the government requires only the approval of God.

Gee, that's awfully reminiscent of the extra-legal policies of post 9-11 America. These require no approval or oversight by the other branches of government, only the approval of the Almighty.

The remarks by Ayatollah Taqi Mesbah, and similar comments by an aide, were roundly criticized, even on the editorial page of Kayhan, a traditional showcase for hard-line thinking. Iranian political insiders said the flap offered a window on intense infighting at the highest reaches of Iran's theocracy just as world attention is focused on the government's determination to proceed with a nuclear program that skeptics call a cover for atomic weapons.

"Ayatollah Mesbah is an extremist," said one Iranian official close to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the soft-spoken cleric who has been Iran's supreme leader since the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989.

"Ayatollah Khomeini warned the people lots of times not to allow these people, the Shia Talibans, to come to power in Iran and have space," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, noting that Khamenei has judged it prudent to accommodate even extremists within the system and accord them respect. "Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei feel these people can do a lot of damage. They can damage Iran. They can damage Islam. They are like the Taliban. They are like al-Qaeda. They say they know what Allah expects from us -- that we should do what he wants from us without paying attention to the consequences.

This is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. The American info-warriors dream up wording about our newest bogeyman that, consciously or not, uses language that could equally be applied to the Bush administration.

Traditional conservatives viewing the people in power as being recklessly extremist. Potential damage to the country, etc.

It looks like the script could have been lifted directly from a domestic American critique of the current U.S. leadership. Only the names have been changed.

The blatant comparison of Iran and Al Qaeda, however, marks the piece as yet another composition bearing a remarkably similar style to that often seen from the boys in the psyop shop.

Attack on Moqtada al-Sadr Forces

The American goal of keeping the Shiites from rising up against the occupation may have suffered a big setback in an attack Sunday on a group of Sadr's followers by U.S. and Iraqi special forces.

U.S. and Iraqi special forces killed at least 16 followers of the Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Sunday in a twilight assault on what the U.S. military said was a "terrorist cell" responsible for attacks on soldiers and civilians...

Aides to Sadr, who is backed by one of the country's largest and most feared militias, said those killed were innocents praying in the al-Moustafa mosque in the Shaab neighborhood, well north of Adhamiyah, when the assault began at 6 p.m.

I doubt that the American forces, at least, attacked the mosque. After three years the sensitivities of the Muslims about the mosques is one lesson that has been beaten into the American troops.

But the allegation does not have to be true to stir up the Shiite hordes.

"I think we are going to have a firm stance against the American forces because of this crime," Salam al-Maliki, the country's transportation minister and a close Sadr ally, said on al-Iraqiya television. The network aired footage throughout the night of bloody bodies lying on a concrete floor and men wrapping the corpses in blankets by the light of glow sticks and carrying them away.

Maliki blamed the incident on U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who has accused the Mahdi Army of carrying out a slew of recent killings in the wake of the bombing last month of a revered Shiite mosque in Samarra, north of Baghdad...


An aide to Jafari, who was endorsed by Sadr's political wing to retain his job in the next government but is opposed by other Iraqi factions, said the government was not notified about the raid in advance.


"The incident has injured the whole political process," said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, referring to the deliberations about the composition of the next government that have deadlocked since elections in December. "Some leaders will be dismayed of this situation and hesitate to participate knowing that such an incident took place and how the government was not aware. We need to sort of calm down the situation now."


The formation of the Iraqi "Unity" government was already proving to be a tenuous proposition, with the first parliamentary meeting to select a government adjourning after only 30 minutes with no further meetings scheduled.

This latest incident won't help things.

Treacherous Groups Targeted By FBI

We have known for quite a while now about the FBI's surveillance of anti-war protesters and environmental activists, but today's Los Angeles Times reports on several other shadowy groups that the feds are spying on. One stands out as particularly suspicious.

It is people who feed vegetarian meals to the homeless.

The FBI's encounters with activists are described in hundreds of pages of documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act after agents visited several activists before the 2004 political conventions. Details have steadily trickled out over the last year, but newly released documents provide a fuller view of some FBI probes...

The list included
Food Not Bombs, which mainly serves vegetarian food to homeless people, and, with a question mark next to it, Indymedia, a collective that publishes what it calls radical journalism online.

It is interesting that the feds target groups opposed to war. The logic there must be that groups that dislike official violence may embrace non-official violence as psychological compensation. Or something like that.

Denver, where the ACLU fought a lengthy court battle with local police over its spying on political groups, has the most extensive records of encounters between the FBI and activists. Documents obtained by the ACLU there revealed how agents monitored the lumber industry demonstration, an antiwar march and an anarchist group that activists say was never formed...

In June 2002, environmental activists protested the annual meeting of the North American Wholesale Lumber Assn. in Colorado Springs. An FBI memo justified opening an inquiry into the protest because an activist training camp was to be held on "nonviolent methods of forest defense, security culture, street theater and banner making."...


About 30 to 40 people attended the protest; three were arrested for trespassing while hanging a political banner. Colorado Springs police faxed the FBI a three-page list of demonstrators' license plate numbers...


"There's a lot of responsibility on the FBI," said Joe Airey, head of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force in Denver. "We have a real obligation to make sure there are no additional terrorist acts on this soil."


The bottom line is that if and when any future terrorist attacks occur in the U.S., the investigative agencies will have to explain how wasting manpower on crap like this helped to detect the plot that they will have just missed.

Sunday, March 26, 2006

The Lincoln Group Does Not Do Propaganda

Today's Washington Post features an article that gets into the spooky area of information operations. You may be thinking, "don't they do that every day on instructions from above"? Yes, you would have a valid point, but today's piece is actually about info-ops conducted by the Lincoln Group, the shadowy DOD contractor which plants stories in the Iraqi media.

Lincoln doesn't call what they do propaganda.

"We call it 'influence,' " says (Paige Craig, the West Point dropout and former Marine intelligence specialist who is the Lincoln Group's president), whose business has 12 U.S. government contracts totaling more than $130 million.

The Lincoln Group even has a "senior director for insight and influence." His name is Andrew Garfield...


The company has been contracted by a psyops division of the U.S. military, but Garfield insists that Lincoln's work cannot be considered psyops. That word, Garfield protests, refers to a military operation. And Garfield is very familiar with military psyops, as he is a former British military and intelligence official who regularly teaches a course at the U.S. Army base at Fort Bragg -- a course on . . . psyops...


Words can change what people think. Add some emotional punch and piercing imagery, and words can change how people behave. Repeat these words and images over and over, and they can define a culture. That's the info war -- far more intense than mere "spin" -- and it's been raging in the United States since the words "war on terror" were uttered in public and the national zeitgeist became one of fear.


The editors at the Post must have included this expert opinion as an inside joke:

"Part of the beauty of real successful propaganda is it works without you knowing that it works," says Anthony Pratkanis, co-author of "Age of Propaganda" and a professor of social psychology at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Ho ho ho.

The article goes into the controversy about the DOD's use of the Lincoln Group, and the operational failure that the effort became public.

In a way, this is the price to be paid for not going covert all the way. Had the program been conducted completely undercover, it would have been better, says Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA case officer and now a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

"You can compliment the Pentagon for at least trying," he says of the military's outsourcing to Lincoln. "I think the agency [CIA] should have been engaged in this a long time ago."


"I suppose the historical parallel would be the agency's efforts during the Cold War to fund magazines, newspapers and journalists who believed that the West should triumph over communism," he says. "Much of what you do ought to be covert, and, certainly, if you contract it out, it isn't."


That's why they are not contracting out the anti-Iran info-op.

Saturday, March 25, 2006

Iran's 164-Centrifuge "Cascade"

Our regular coverage of the anti-Iran info-op takes us today in the direction of a purported technological breakthrough that is allegedly near at hand by Iran in their efforts at uranium enrichment.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, last week briefed diplomats from Britain, France, the United States, China, Russia and Germany, at the request of all six countries, on the progress Iran has made in assembling a 164-centrifuge "cascade" for uranium enrichment. Such a cascade would be far too small to produce enough weapons-grade fuel for a bomb, experts said. But U.S. and British officials expressed concern that it showed Tehran was mastering the enrichment technology as it works toward building an industrial-scale nuclear enrichment program that would run thousands of centrifuges with the capacity to produce fuel for weapons...

Getting multiple centrifuges to operate together in arrays known as cascades is one of the most daunting engineering challenges in the process of developing enriched uranium. Until now, Iran has been trying to get about 20 centrifuges to work in a cascade. The attempt to try 164 suggests that the Iranians have succeeded at the lower number, but IAEA officials cautioned in the briefing that Iran still faces many technical hurdles in operating a larger cascade, according to U.S. and European officials.

Britain's ambassador to the United Nations, Emyr Jones Parry, said he is "very concerned" that the latest Iranian advance will provide Iran with the technological expertise needed to enrich uranium on a much larger scale. "If you can do 164, you can probably do many more" centrifuges, Jones Parry said. "That means you have the potential to do full-scale enrichment."

A senior U.S. official said that the Bush administration expressed similar concerns. "The reports that Iran is speeding up its enrichment program at Natanz is alarming to all of us, not just to the United States," the official said.

Is everyone scared enough yet to support a bombing campaign?

No?

Then keep reading these reports as we file them. They will find something to convince you. The info-op is building toward a crescendo.

The Ground Zero Grassy Knoll

The March 27 issue of New York magazine has an article, The Ground Zero Grassy Knoll, on the current crop of 9-11 conspiracy theories. Aficionados of this genre will find little or nothing new here, but the way the writer, Mark Jacobson, presents his material makes for an interesting read.

Father Frank Morales's conversion was more dramatic. Raised in the Jacob Riis Projects, Morales, who if not for his priest collar could be mistaken for an East Village hipster, is a longtime Lower East Side hero, primarily for his work with local squatter communities. The day after 9/11, the diocese asked if he'd go to ground zero to perform last rites. "They said be prepared, because "we're not talking bodies, Frank, we're talking body parts.""

"I could feel myself getting madder and madder, not the way a priest is supposed to feel," ” says Morales. Sitting with a fireman, Morales called out, "If I had somebody in this mess, I'd wanna get those motherfuckers." It was then, Morales says, that the fireman whispered, "Hey, that'’s not it. You wanna know something? Bush and bin Laden have the same banker."


Later Jacobson describes his own experiences of that day:

Hours later, I sat down beside another, impossibly weary firefighter. Covered with dust, he was drinking a bottle of Poland Spring water. Half his squad was missing. They'd gone into the South Tower and never come out. Then, almost as a non sequitur, the fireman indicated the building in front of us, maybe 400 yards away.

"That building is coming down," he said with a drained casualness.


"Really?" I asked. At 47 stories, it would be a skyscraper in most cities, centerpiece of the horizon. But in New York, it was nothing but a nondescript box with fire coming out of the windows. "When?"


"Tonight . . . Maybe tomorrow morning."


This was around 5:15 p.m. I know because five minutes later, at 5:20, the building, 7 World Trade Center, crumbled.



LIHOP, MIHOP, and assorted other theories are discussed, and deals briefly with the reason why it will be impossible to decipher the truth of the matter--disinformation intentionally placed in the path of the researcher:

The D-word is nothing to take lightly in conspiracy circles. For, as Thomas Pynchon notes in his "Proverbs for Paranoids," if they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.

Bingo.

There exists many labyrinths and wild goose chases designed to divert anyone who looks seriously at the events of that day.

There are too many grassy knolls this time making for an insurmountable investigative task.

Just the way they want it.

Lets Blame The Russkies Now

When all the U.S. networks led with this story last night, I knew that something obnoxious was afoot. I was right. The U.S. government is now trying to get the distracted American people to believe that the vile Russians have contributed to our impending defeat in Iraq.

Russian officials collected intelligence on U.S. troop movements and attack plans from inside the American military command leading the 2003 invasion of Iraq and passed that information to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, according to a U.S. military study released yesterday.

The intelligence reports, which the study said were provided to Hussein through the Russian ambassador in Baghdad at the height of the U.S. assault, warned accurately that American formations intended to bypass Iraqi cities on their thrust toward Baghdad. The reports provided some specific numbers on U.S. troops, units and locations, according to Iraqi documents dated March and April 2003 and later captured by the United States.

"The information that the Russians have collected from their sources inside the American Central Command in Doha is that the United States is convinced that occupying Iraqi cities are impossible, and that they have changed their tactic," said one captured Iraqi document titled "Letter from Russian Official to Presidential Secretary Concerning American Intentions in Iraq" and dated March 25, 2003.

Note the highlighted passage. This document indicates that the U.S. was fully aware before the war of the nightmare inherent in trying to occupy Iraqi cities. And adjusted the war plan accordingly.

This makes the U.S. officials who didn't plan for the troubles we have seen in occupied Iraq (the civilians) look even more derelict in their "short-sightedness" than previously publicly known.

"This is absolutely nonsense," said Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian mission to the United Nations. She said the allegations were never presented to the Russian government before being issued to the news media.

Why would she expect that we would clear propaganda (based on truthful information or not) with the party that we are smearing?

The study gives no indication who the alleged sources inside the U.S. Central Command might have been, or whether American officials believe the Kremlin authorized the transfer of information to Hussein's government.

That's the only really germane issue here. Whether the Russian government per se authorized their man in Baghdad to give the intel to Saddam.

Celeste A. Wallander, director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that although Russia probably had intelligence on U.S. war plans, she is skeptical that the Kremlin would have ordered that it be passed to Hussein's government.

It is more likely that a "freelancing" Russian official such as the ambassador in Baghdad personally shuttled the information, she said.

Lets get real, folks. This is war. If anyone in the U.S. security establishment thought that the Russians were not inclined to engage in such skullduggery--that is inter alia an intel failure.

The reason that we are seeing this information being trumpeted now by the government--the same authorities who are leaving much of a broad range of 50 years worth of diplomatic history classified--is simple.

The allegations against Russia will, over time, become a part of the excuse matrix for why we lost the Iraq war.

Friday, March 24, 2006

Iran Accused Of Skullduggery in Iraq

It's been a few days since we covered the anti-Iran information operation. Today brings a message from "Zal", as every jerkoff in Washington refers to U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad.

Iran is publicly professing its support for Iraq's stalemated political process while its military and intelligence services back outlawed militias and insurgent groups, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said Thursday.

Iranian agents train and arm Shiite Muslim militias such as the Mahdi Army, linked to one of Iraq's most powerful clerics, Khalilzad said, and also work closely with Sunni Arab-led insurgent forces including Ansar al-Sunna, blamed for dozens of deadly attacks on Iraqi and American soldiers and Shiite civilians.

"Our judgment is that training and supplying, direct or indirect, takes place, and that there is also provision of financial resources to people, to militias, and that there is presence of people associated with Revolutionary Guard and with MOIS," the Afghan-born Khalilzad said, referring to Iran's main military force and its Ministry of Intelligence and Security.

The phrase "our judgment is" refers in U.S. intelligence community-speak to the consensus position expressed in a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE).

Someone authorized Khalilzad to allude to the classified NIE. In other words, this is being released for propaganda purposes.

Khalilzad expressed particular concern over Iran's ties to the Mahdi Army, an armed group loyal to the outspoken Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr that the ambassador said was responsible for many of the recent killings, despite Sadr's public pleas for calm...

But Khalilzad said the United States has had no face-to-face contact with the cleric, in his early thirties, whose followers hold more than 30 seats in the new parliament. "No, I don't talk to him, because we don't meet with Moqtada Sadr, but I have sent him messages publicly. . . . We engage him whatever way we can," said Khalilzad, who added that he and other embassy officials did meet with Sadr's political allies. "I think that our people advise me against it because there is an indictment against him."

The denial of any contact between U.S. officials and Sadr is a questionable assertion at best.

An aide to Sadr, one of the most outspoken critics of the U.S. military presence in Iraq, said Thursday that the cleric would not meet with American officials until foreign troops are withdrawn from Iraq.

The previous statement is made in precisely the same spirit as George W. Bush's claims never to have met Jack Abramoff.

Khalilzad ends with a reasonable statement given the situation. Too bad it is untrue:

"I have been reduced -- and I am not complaining -- to an observer, which is a good thing," he said, dismissing the widely held belief that he is still the driving force for unity, cajoling rival groups to negotiate. "I think now I say that they are really politically moving toward a self-reliance."

The reader is well advised to take Khalilzad's "observer" status with a grain of salt.

Blame The War Opponents, Act One

This morning, ace WaPo op-ed man David Ignatius argues that Bush needs to do a better job of convincing the American people that we are, contrary to war critics, doing well in Iraq.

Ignatius says that if Bush fails to succeed in snowing the people, we may be forced--despite impending victory-- to withdraw prematurely from Iraq in failure.

This is an opening salvo of the "blame the war opponents for our eventual loss in Iraq" program, discussed here earlier this week.

The polls suggest that Bush is losing the ability to communicate effectively about the issue that matters most to him. He has a better story on Iraq than many people seem to appreciate: Iraqi politicians are in fact coming together toward a government of national unity; Iraqi troops are improving their performance; substantial reductions in the number of U.S. troops are likely this year. But to many Americans, judging by the polls, Bush's assertions sound like a broken record. His optimism comes across as happy talk...

Ask senior military commanders what they think about Bush and they will tell you they love his toughness -- but wish the White House could communicate its Iraq strategy better.


Horse Hockey. If the military commanders could win the war, they already would have. All the domestic propaganda in the world cannot salvage the mission. Only prolong the inevitable.

Bush works hard to disguise it, but one senses the same inner conflict that afflicted Johnson as Vietnam began to go bad. In "The Best and the Brightest," David Halberstam described LBJ's torment: "He was a good enough politician to know what had gone wrong and what he was in for and what it meant to his dreams, but he could not turn back, he could not admit that he had made a mistake. He could not lose and thus he had to plunge forward." But, recalls Halberstam, "instead of leading, he was immobilized, surrounded, seeing critics everywhere."

True enough. Ignatius always tries to sound reasonable when pushing the agenda of the national security state.

Then he is back to it:

It's a dangerous situation. If Bush loses his ability to convince the country that his war aims make sense, America may be forced into a hasty withdrawal that will have devastating repercussions.

Here you have it, folks. Ignatius has been entrusted to start getting opinion, especially among the influential Washington lemmings, behind the new meme.

It has worked for 30 years against the Vietnam War protest movement.

Hence, the Halberstam quote.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

American Arrested For Hotel Bombings in Bolivia

In a curious episode given the tensions between the United States and Bolivia, an American is in custody in La Paz for allegedly committing two hotel bombings.

An American man and his Uruguayan girlfriend were arrested Wednesday after bombs severely damaged two low-budget hotels in Bolivia's capital, killing two people and injuring at least seven.

Police said they believe the pair had "
religious motives" for the attack and had plans to bomb the Chilean consulate in La Paz on Saturday, according to Isaac Pemintel, the national police chief.

Police initially said the blasts were "typical of terrorist crime," and President Evo Morales lost no time in denouncing them as an attack on Bolivia's democracy.


"This American was putting bombs in hotels," Morales said. "The U.S. government fights terrorism, and they send us terrorists."


But other Bolivian officials discounted terrorism as a motive, saying the American appeared to be mentally ill.


The possibility of mind control is not far from the surface given the reported circumstances of this case.

"The possible motives behind these attacks are incomprehensible. There don't seem to be any concrete objectives other than causing deaths," Deputy Interior Minister Rafael Puente told Radio Fides...

Police identified the suspects as Claudio Lestad, 24, of New Orleans, and Alda Ribeiro, 40, of Uruguay, though authorities said Lestad was carrying altered documents and uses various names, including "Lestat Claudius de Orleans y Montevideo."

Lestad, who was born in California, registered himself at the hotel as a lawyer of Saudi Arabian nationality but also calls himself a priest, Pemintel said...

La Paz district attorney Jorge Gutierrez said the suspects entered Bolivia from Argentina and carried out attacks in other Bolivian cities but caused no injuries. They also tried to bomb an ATM machine in northern Argentina, police said...

In the days before the blasts, the Uruguayan woman had been giving away promotional calendars to businesses in La Paz, with a picture of herself naked and a cardboard box of explosives perched on her knee, according to Marta Silva, who owns a store across from the second hotel.

The calendars offered the "sale and export of explosives, fireworks and liquor," with a phone number and post office box in the Bolivian city of Potosi.

Nude calendars featuring the "sale and export of explosives, fireworks and liquor" as part of a religiously motivated op?

If such a religion existed, I'm sure that I would have been a member at one point or another.

No sale.

The nutcase angle in a politically motivated attack is the classic mind control tell.

Don't forget Mark David Chapman.

Views Of Life In Baghdad From FSOs

The Foreign Service Journal has surveyed active duty Foreign Service Officers about their experiences serving in Iraq.

Some excerpts:

How does the way you work in Iraq differ from the way you worked at other posts?

The three top ways working in Iraq differs from other places, according to the respondents, are: the level of danger, the extreme work hours and the non-integrated command structure between the embassy, the military and the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office.

Another factor raised by many survey respondents was the impact of having so many appointees and contractors at the mission, many of whom have never served in an embassy or overseas before.

One officer notes the difference by describing a trip to the Red Zone he had just taken the day before to meet with an Iraqi contact. (The Red Zone is all of Iraq outside the protected central-Baghdad area known unofficially as the Green Zone and officially as the International Zone.)

"I traveled to the meeting with three armored vehicles and 14 fully-armed contractors in assault gear as my personal security escort. I was met by six more of the same at the site who had secured the building before my arrival. As we entered Check Point One on our return to the International Zone, a car bomb detonated at Check Point Two, killing two and injuring many more. Timing is everything."

Many respondents commented on the "extreme" work hours. It is clear that the pace in Baghdad is frenetic and the flow of incoming taskings is relentless.

"The day begins at 8 a.m. or before, with meetings scheduled as late as 8 p.m.," explains an FSO serving in Baghdad. "People routinely work until 11 p.m., and there never seems to be a break. It creates a kind of Vegas casino atmosphere where you don't know if it's night or day outside because the activity level is constant. We have Friday 'off' but since Washington works on Friday, we need to be here then as well."...


Do security precautions limit your ability to do your job, and if so, how?

"It is not possible to leave the Green Zone without bodyguards," says an FSO serving in Baghdad, "and it is necessary to request them at least two days prior to any trip out. Many times security conditions will make it necessary to cancel or postpone a planned trip. The heavy security presence that accompanies us into the Red Zone also puts a damper on meetings. These security precautions are, however, absolutely necessary. This is a war zone and there are people out there who are actively trying to kill us. Anyone who doubts the need for the security precautions in place should be immediately removed from the mission."

"Security limits my ability to work," writes one officer serving in Baghdad. "Iraqis don't want me to visit their ministry with my personal security detail in town because that makes them a target. At the same time it is such a hassle to put in for and be approved for a Personal Security Detail and to coordinate the movement. There is very little flexibility, so no spontaneous action is ever possible."...


Many positions in Iraq have been and continue to be filled by non-career appointees, contractors and detailees from outside the Foreign Service. What has been the impact of this?

Out of some 2,000-plus people working on the U.S. embassy compound in Baghdad, fewer than 200 are career Foreign Service. Of course, at many embassies, State and the other foreign affairs agencies are a minority compared to the other federal agencies represented, but there is no other embassy in the world that is host to so many non-Foreign Service employees, political appointees and contractors.

"Frankly, I think a lot of the political appointees were disasters," writes an officer who served in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. "They seemed to be ideologues rather than diplomats. A lot of the contractors and other detailees I met seemed quite capable."

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Goopers Planning To Blame Anti-War Crowd For Ultimate Defeat In Iraq

The Bush administration and their GOP allies, up to their knees in muck in the political stable they have constructed for themselves by their reckless intervention in Iraq, are planning an exit strategy.

A political exit strategy.

Not a plan for departing from that beleaguered Middle-Eastern country. But for escaping from the consequences of being viewed as having lost the war.

They are planning on blaming the critics of the war for both emboldening "our enemies" to fight on in face of superior firepower, and for forcing the administration's hand to eventually withdraw most of our troops when we have to leave without achieving victory.

The fact that any outcome that a reasonable person might regard as "victory" was probably never in the cards from the very beginning does not matter to these tools.

The American people hate nothing more than losing, and the responsibility for having lost a war is something that must be projected upon one's enemy.

The placing of blame for losing Iraq is going to be used to obscure the malfeasance that Bush and his people applied to get us into the quagmire. The onus of failure will be bestowed upon those whose only involvement was to exercise their right to free speech.

If the plan succeeds, the burden of the Iraq albatross will not be upon the Republican party, but by default upon the Democrats.

This is a main reason (aside from sheer cowardice) that we have not seen more energetic opposition to the war from the Democratic politicians in Washington.

Such a cynical strategy is not surprising in the rough world of politics.

It is to be expected coming from those with the moral development of your average GOP wonk.

Any war opponent will naturally have the readily available retort that the administration hasn't listened to anyone but themselves throughout the entire episode. That the blame resides there.

Unfortunately, the average overworked American voter knows little more about current events than he or she can pick up from television news. Ignorance of the issues has never stopped anyone from going to the polls.

They will be easy marks for the con-artists who are equating opposition to a war that has unnecessarily created legions of new enemies to a desire to allow the USA to be attacked by people who hate us for our freedoms.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

U.S. Officials Claim Iran Is Helping Al-Qaeda

The administration needs to establish ties between Iran and Al-Qaeda if they are to be able to successfully promote the necessity of war with the Islamic Republic.

It would be even better to accuse the Iranians of participating in 9-11.

From today's Los Angeles Times:

U.S. intelligence officials, already focused on Iran's potential for building nuclear weapons, are struggling to solve a more immediate mystery: the murky relationship between the new Tehran leadership and the contingent of Al Qaeda leaders residing in the country.

Some officials, citing evidence from highly classified satellite feeds and electronic eavesdropping, believe the Iranian regime is playing host to much of Al Qaeda's remaining brain trust and allowing the senior operatives freedom to communicate and help plan the terrorist network's operations.


And they suggest that recently elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be forging an alliance with Al Qaeda operatives as a way to expand Iran's influence or, at a minimum, that he is looking the other way as Al Qaeda leaders in his country collaborate with their counterparts elsewhere...


To some U.S. intelligence officials, what worries them most is what they don't know.


"I don't need to exaggerate the difficulty in determining what these people are up to at any given moment," the intelligence official said.


The U.S. counter-terrorism official was more blunt. "We don't have any intelligence going on in Iran. No people on the ground," he said. "It blows me away the lack of intelligence that's out there."


Only by the fucked up standards of 21st century U.S. intelligence analysis (and nowhere else in the world of spookdom) can someone extrapolate from no evidence whatsoever that an "imminent" threat is brewing.

One can prudently consider the worst when you don't have all the facts. That's what footnotes in intelligence analyses are for.

But to plan a military attack or other disruptions of the international system based solely upon masturbatory fantasies about worst case scenarios is a whole other level of incompetence that we've not proven to be immune to in recent years.

The remainder of the propaganda piece details a rogue's regiment of Al-Qaeda operatives that the U.S. claims are hiding in Iran.

Leaving aside the obvious non sequitur of Shiite Iran giving voluntary sanctuary to shit-disturbing Wahabists, one wonders why--if true--this would amount to a casus belli against Iran.

On the lunatic fringe, there is a blog calling for the United States to spill it's blood so that a bunch of jerk-off Iranian ex-pats can go back home to a "Free-Iran."

Part of their hook is their claim that Osama bin-Laden was sheltered by the Iranian Mullahs before his death.

Does that make anybody want to immediately head off to the recruiting station? I didn't think so.

That's why we see today's piece in the Los Angeles Times.

L.A. being the home of perhaps the loudest bunch of Iranian expatriates in the USA.

Must be one of them "coincidences."

FBI Agent Warned Superiors More Than 70 Times About Moussaoui

A heretofore unknown aspect of the U.S. security blunders surrounding 9-11 emerged yesterday in the death penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui.

An FBI agent who interrogated Zacarias Moussaoui before Sept. 11, 2001, warned his supervisors more than 70 times that Moussaoui was a terrorist and spelled out his suspicions that the al-Qaeda operative was plotting to hijack an airplane, according to federal court testimony yesterday.

Agent Harry Samit told jurors at Moussaoui's death penalty trial that his efforts to secure a warrant to search Moussaoui's belongings were frustrated at every turn by FBI officials he accused of "criminal negligence."...


Samit's testimony added striking detail to the voluminous public record on the FBI's bungling of the Moussaoui case. It also could help Moussaoui's defense. Samit is a prosecution witness who had earlier backed the government's central theory of the case: that the FBI would have raised "alarm bells" and could have stopped the Sept. 11 attacks if Moussaoui had not lied to agents. But under cross-examination by the defense yesterday, Samit said that he did raise those alarms -- repeatedly -- but that his bosses impeded his efforts.


Defense attorney Edward B. MacMahon Jr. zeroed in on increasingly urgent warnings Samit issued to his FBI supervisors after he interviewed Moussaoui at a Minnesota jail in mid-August 2001. Moussaoui had raised Samit's suspicions because he was training on a 747 simulator with limited flying experience and could not explain his foreign sources of income.

By Aug. 18, 2001, Samit was telling FBI headquarters that he believed Moussaoui intended to hijack a plane "for the purpose of seizing control of the aircraft." A few days later, he learned from FBI agents in France that Moussaoui had been a recruiter for a Muslim group in Chechnya linked to Osama bin Laden.

But when Samit tried to use the French intelligence in his draft application for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to search Moussaoui's belongings, he said, Maltbie edited out the connection with bin Laden because it did not show that a foreign government was involved.


"How are you supposed to establish a connection with a foreign power if it's deleted from the document?" MacMahon asked.


"Well, sir, you can't," Samit replied.


Samit said he also sent an e-mail to the FBI's bin Laden unit but did not receive a response before Sept. 11, 2001...


Samit acknowledged that he told the Justice Department's inspector general's office that his supervisors engaged in "criminal negligence" and were trying to "run out the clock" because they wanted to deport Moussaoui rather than prosecute him.


Most portions of the inspector general's report dealing with Moussaoui have never been made public.


"You thought a terrorist attack was coming, and you were being obstructed, right?" MacMahon asked.


"Yes, sir," Samit answered.


One has to wonder why the supervisors were so opposed to investigating Moussaoui. The story about simply wishing to deport him does not fly.

Especially in light of the editing of the French intelligence information out of the FISA affidavit.

And all the other suspicious government actions surrounding the events of that day.

"War Against All Hazards"

Not long ago, I heard a medical student claim that he had dissected better looking cadavers than Michael Chertoff.

The body, despite a chronic cough that is not convincingly explained away as from "a cold", is still up and functioning. I'm not so sure about the brain.

A typically witty Dana Milbank column this morning gets into the details. Beginning with your typical local color:

As Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff sat down for lunch yesterday on the seventh floor of the Heritage Foundation, a vivid scene from the post-9/11 world was unfolding outside the conference-room window.

Two blocks away at Union Station, a small grease fire had erupted on the grill at McDonald's. The blaze was quickly extinguished, but not before jittery security personnel ordered the terminal evacuated. Hundreds of shoppers, diners and rail passengers, heeding shouted warnings to flee the premises, flowed into the plaza outside, where emergency response vehicles joined the usual duck boats and tourist trolleys.

Chertoff aides watched the mayhem from the Heritage windows, but Chertoff himself missed the hullabaloo; one of his lunch partners explained that his security guards had ordered the blinds drawn.

It's not easy being Mr. Chertoff:

A strikingly thin man with a high-pitched voice, pointy ears and droopy eyelids, Chertoff speaks of "the critical points of triangulation" and calls for a "properly risk-managed approach to critical infrastructure." He talks about the need for "total assets visibility" and favors "an integrated, sensible, systems-based approach." He desires "better information about the constituents of the supply chain." And instead of telling people that he's protecting them, he says that his department has "done a lot to elevate the general baseline of security in this country."

Speaking yesterday to another group, the International Association of Fire Fighters at the Hyatt on Capitol Hill, he tried to put his talent for post 9-11 language abuse to the test.

Pointing to photos of the Sept. 11, 2001, wreckage, Chertoff said: "You are really part of the war on terror, as well as the war against all hazards."

War Against All Hazards: WAAH?

Isn't that the sound that babies make when they want their mommy?

Monday, March 20, 2006

CATCH ALL Program Details Revealed

CATCH ALL (SMC's nomenclature)--a super-secret NSA program that forms the heart of the warrantless eavesdropping effort--the most sensitive details of which were first disclosed by the blog Swedish Meatballs Confidential, is now confirmed in a roundabout way in an article at GovExec.

To find meaningful patterns in transactional data, analysts need a lot of it. They must set baselines about what constitutes "normal" behavior versus "suspicious" activity. Administration officials have said that the NSA doesn't intercept the contents of a communication unless officials have a "reasonable" basis to conclude that at least one party is linked to a terrorist organization.

To make any reasonable determination like that, the agency needs hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of call records, preferably as soon as they are created, said a senior person in the defense industry who is familiar with the NSA program and is an expert in the analytical tools used to find patterns and connections. Asked if this means that the NSA program is much broader and less targeted than administration officials have described, the expert replied, "I think that's correct."...

Such was the state of affairs when the NSA started looking for terrorist patterns in a telephonic ocean. So, instead of looking for a tool that could cull through the data, the agency decided to "reverse" the process, starting with the data set and working backward, looking for algorithms that could work with it.

The NSA has made some breakthroughs, the industry expert said, but its solution relies in part on a technological "trick," which he wouldn't disclose. Another data-mining expert, who also asked not to be identified because the NSA's work is classified, said that computer engineers probably started with the telecom companies' call data, looked for patterns, and then wrote algorithms to detect them as they went along, tweaking the algorithms as needed.

IAEA Or UNSC For Iran?

The pesky Russians and Chinese are continuing to obstruct the U.S. plan for dealing with the freedom hatin' Iranians.

U.S. and European diplomats have failed during two weeks of negotiations to overcome Chinese and Russian objections to a Security Council statement demanding that Iran stop its nuclear-enrichment activities and cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency...

U.S. and European officials say they will try to assuage Russian and Chinese fears that the adoption of the statement will inevitably lead to harsh punitive measures against Iran. "We're not hellbent on going to war; we're not hellbent on imposing sanctions," said a senior State Department official familiar with the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks are supposed to be confidential...

Russian diplomats say they are concerned that a U.S.-backed European draft, which sets a two-week deadline for Tehran to stop enrichment activities and agree to more intrusive U.N. inspections, provides too little time to test Iran's cooperation. Russia's U.N. ambassador, Andrei Denisov, mockingly told the Associated Press on Friday: "Let's just imagine that we adopt it and today we issued that statement -- then what happens after two weeks?
In such a pace, we'll start bombing in June."

I'm not so sure that Mr. Denisov was speaking sardonically when he said that. He is doubtlessly privy to U.N. watercooler speculation about what likely outrages may come from the U.S. side following any (even imagined) violation of international restrictions upon Iran's actions in the nuclear area.

The standoff hinges on whether the Iran crisis should be handled by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency or the Security Council, which can impose sanctions or use force. Russia and China have insisted that the IAEA take the lead, while the United States, France and Britain say that Iran will stop its activities only if faced with the threat of sanctions.

If, as the U.S. is portraying, Iran is so irrational that they are likely to use nuclear weapons against the West, why do we think that they are rational enough to be deterred by the threat of sanctions?

Logic must never have been part of the curricula at any of the universities that our policymakers cheated their way through.

Bush, Cheney Expect Victory in Iraq

The administration continues, despite evidence to the contrary, to insist that the ill-fated U.S. endeavor in Iraq will result in victory.

It all depends on the meaning of the word "victory."

The glass is looking more than half full to the true believers.

The administration could take heart this weekend from the relatively small antiwar protests around the country, compared with protests held on the previous anniversaries of the invasion. An estimated 7,000 people demonstrated in Chicago on Saturday and smaller protests were held over the weekend in Boston, San Francisco and other cities. In Times Square, the figure was about 1,000.

Now is not the time for Americans to go wobbly on the war, insisted Bush yesterday.

Bush, speaking on the third anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, assured Americans that his administration is pursuing a strategy "that will lead to victory in Iraq," an outcome about which polls show the public is increasingly skeptical.

The omniscient Vice President Cheney proved that he knows more about the situation on the ground in Iraq than people in that country who are not neo-cons.

Cheney, meanwhile, dismissed assertions made by former Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi that the nation is in the throes of civil war. He said Iraq is holding together as a new constitutional democracy even as terrorists are desperately trying to cause its dissolution...

Cheney also dismissed a statement by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who said the war in Iraq should never have been fought: "I would not look to Ted Kennedy for guidance and leadership on how we ought to manage national security. . . . I think what Senator Kennedy reflects is sort of the pre-9/11 mentality about how we ought to deal with the world and that part of the world."

But CBS anchor Bob Schieffer bluntly challenged Cheney on his own string of prognostications, such as his pre-invasion assertion that U.S. troops would be welcomed in Iraq as liberators and, 10 months ago, that the insurgency was in its "last throes."


Cheney replied that those statements were "basically accurate and reflect reality," but that public perceptions of Iraq's progress are being skewed "because what's newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad."


Again linking the war in Iraq to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Cheney called the conflict part of "an aggressive, forward-leaning" strategy that has since prevented terrorist incidents in the United States.

Only a psychopath would imagine that we haven't created more rather than less danger for Americans by our war of aggression against Iraq.

While not bothered by the opinions of the American public or Democratic lawmakers, the White House is growing concerned about increasing misgivings about the war on the part of their Republican allies in Washington.

As the administration offered optimistic appraisals of the war's progress, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a frequent administration critic who is weighing a run for president in 2008, echoed Allawi's assessment, saying that Iraq is already in the midst of a "low-grade civil war."

"I think it's important that we stop this talk about we're not going to leave until we achieve victory," Hagel said on ABC's "This Week." "Well, what is victory? We achieved victory: Saddam's gone, the Iraqis have a constitution, they had an election, it's now up to them."

The semantic challenge of defining down "victory" in Iraq may prove to be one of the most important battles, at least politically, that Republicans will face during the next several election cycles.

Sunday, March 19, 2006

Ho Ho Ho

From a commenter at AMERICAblog:

MSNBC Cable news anchor, Contessa Brewer, desperately shilling for the Bush Admin, just asked her guest Newsweek correspondent if he felt the soldiers thought they were getting enough prayers from the American people? PRAYERS??? AS IF the guy could comment on the number of prayers being offered up?


ROFL

Iraq Is Embroiled In Civil War Says Allawi, Will

Two men who are certainly no shrinking violets when it comes to hawkishness have publicly announced something that readers of this blog are long aware of--that Iraq is embroiled in a civil war.

The administration continues their public denial of the obvious.

Iraq is in the middle of a civil war, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said in a TV interview aired Sunday. His comments were immediately rejected by Britain's defense secretary.


Conservative pundit George Will agrees with Allawi's diagnosis of the situation on the ground in the U.S. ruined country.

(The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency Lt. Gen. Michael) Maples delicately says that although Iraq is not "at this time" in a civil war, "the underlying conditions" for such a war "are present." But civil wars do not usually begin with an identifiable event, such as the firing on Fort Sumter, or proceed to massed, uniformed forces clashing in battles like Shiloh. Iraq's civil war -- which looks more like Spain's in the 1930s -- began months ago.

In Spain, the security forces were united and in three years were victorious. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. John Abizaid, U.S. commander in the Middle East, recently said that Iraqi forces would cope with a civil war "to the extent they're able to" (Rumsfeld) and "they'll handle it with our help" (Abizaid). Their problematic assumption is that Iraq's security forces have a national loyalty and will not fracture along the fissures of Iraq's sectarian society.

Speaking of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, the outspoken kook has published an op-ed in today's Washington Post, typically offending the sensibilities of any reasonably aware Americans with his obfuscation.

History is not made up of daily headlines, blogs on Web sites or the latest sensational attack. History is a bigger picture, and it takes some time and perspective to measure accurately.

This, from one of the central theorists of the historical revisionist idea that the U.S. did not lose the Vietnam War.

Consider that in three years Iraq has gone from enduring a brutal dictatorship to electing a provisional government to ratifying a new constitution written by Iraqis to electing a permanent government last December. In each of these elections, the number of voters participating has increased significantly -- from 8.5 million in the January 2005 election to nearly 12 million in the December election -- in defiance of terrorists' threats and attacks.

Sounds good? Let GOP stalwart George Will add the missing color commentary:

Conditions in Iraq have worsened in the 94 days that have passed since Iraq's elections in December. And there still is no Iraqi government that can govern. By many measures conditions are worse than they were a year ago, when they were worse than they had been the year before.

Rummy uses an example from one of his prescribed long historical vantage points to argue against withdrawing U.S. troops from their Iraq:

Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis. It would be as great a disgrace as if we had asked the liberated nations of Eastern Europe to return to Soviet domination because it was too hard or too tough or we didn't have the patience to work with them as they built free countries.

Rumsfeld ignores the fact that the allies had plenty of troops and civilians on the ground in defeated Germany (not to mention the Marshall Plan) to assist the Germans in creating their new society. How does he expect the Americans to do the same thing in Iraq where the security situation is hardly conducive to a similar effort?

And we didn't reject the formerly Communist Eastern Europe for the simple reason that there were newly created economic opportunities for business which conveniently presented themselves therein.

Such bullshittery is one telling symptom of the sickness that has gripped the highest levels of the administration.

Saturday, March 18, 2006

Hypothesis About Govt. Lawyer's Possible Motivation

The judge in the Zacarias Moussaoui sentencing trial has reversed course and will allow aviation evidence, albeit untouched by the witness tampering government lawyer, to be shown to the jury.

In making this decision, the judge cited the cost to the taxpayers of the trial. Nice.

A federal judge yesterday revived the Justice Department's death penalty case for Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, accepting a compromise offered by prosecutors to find new aviation security witnesses not tainted by the misconduct of a government lawyer...

"I'm fully aware of the huge resources that have been expended on this case, the fact that we summoned 850 jurors . . . and I agree it would be unfortunate if this case could not go forward to some final resolution," Brinkema said in a teleconference with case attorneys, according to a transcript...


Although the government will continue its case, legal experts said the week's events still leave prosecutors in a tough spot. Martin had worked on the case since at least 2002 and had contact with aviation security experts throughout the government...


In e-mails to the seven witnesses, Martin was highly critical of the prosecution's argument that aviation officials could have kept the hijackers' knives from getting onto the planes, and defense attorneys might want jurors to hear of her doubts. But experts said it would be difficult for the defense to persuade Brinkema to allow evidence of Martin's conduct or e-mails. "It shouldn't come in, and I don't see how it would," said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond. "It could poison the minds of the jury."...


Martin violated a standing court order by e-mailing trial transcripts to the seven witnesses and coaching them on their testimony. All those witnesses worked for the government and were experts on aviation security. They would have testified about the government's ability to have stopped the terror attacks had Moussaoui not lied to the FBI when he was arrested in August 2001.


After a hearing Tuesday, Brinkema barred the testimony of the seven witnesses and the aviation evidence. That evidence is key, because about half of the prosecution's case consists of showing that airport security would have been dramatically stepped up if Moussaoui had provided the information.



Judge Brinkema is fully aware that much of the aviation evidence will show that airline security could not have detected all the weapons before they made it on to the plane.

Especially since the weapons used in the attack were not merely "box cutters" as the American public has been told, but ceramic knives that were sharper than steel, and which would not show up on the metal detectors.

It was never believed that the ceramic knives information would be presented to the jury. The government does not want this to be widely known.

Martin's violation of federal trial protocol was so brazen that she must have known, if discovered, it would result in the aviation security evidence being thrown out.

This may have been the goal all along.

Keeping the existence of the ceramic knives quiet may be an even more important reason than protecting the airlines from liability to explain the bizarre behavior of Ms. Martin.

Friday, March 17, 2006

Iran Agrees To Diplomatic Talks

The Islamic Republic of Iran is attempting to try to defuse the tensions between their country and the United States by agreeing to official meetings which have been rare since the 1979 hostage crisis.

The White House welcomed the Iranian participation, which was solicited by the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, and urged by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a Shiite leader in Iraq with close ties to Tehran.

Stephen J. Hadley, President Bush's national security adviser, said Khalilzad had been authorized to talk to the Iranians about their interference in Iraq "and make that concern known, recognizing that in the end of the day, it is not a negotiation." Hadley added that Iranian activity in Iraq "is giving comfort and, in some case, equipment to terrorists that are killing Iraqis and killing coalition forces. And that is what we have made very clear is unacceptable."

I have been searching the text of the Iranian acceptance of the diplomatic talks, yet I fail to see the part where Iran used the words "Iran's interference in Iraq." More likely from the Iranians point of view is that negotiations discussions will center on the "U.S. interference in Iraq."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last year authorized Khalilzad to hold direct talks with Iran about Iraq, but the Iranians wanted to include other issues in the discussions, a senior State Department official said...

Iranian and U.S. diplomats have coordinated on regional conflicts in recent years. Tehran sent representatives to Germany for a conference that the United States convened to plan for Afghanistan's transition following the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. Iranian diplomats continued to meet with U.S. officials in Geneva and Paris in the run-up to the Iraq war, albeit secretly after Bush included Iran in the "axis of evil" he described in his January 2002 State of the Union address.

The governments exchanged information on hundreds of Arab fighters who fled Afghanistan into Iran, including a handful of senior al-Qaeda officials whom Iran offered to exchange for Iranian guerrillas in U.S. custody in Iraq. The guerrillas had tried to overthrow the Iranian government.

Bush eventually rejected the offer, a decision that infuriated the Iranians and marred the secret talks.

The Bush administration has authorized an information operation aimed at Iran using CIA and military psychological warfare officers.

In addition, the Bush administration this month announced a $75 million initiative to advance democracy in Iran by expanding broadcasting into the country, funding nongovernmental organizations and promoting cultural exchanges.

The cultural exchange is intended to help spread American values.

The first emissaries are rumored to be the Pussycat Dolls opening for Toby Keith. Some Stock Car racers will be on hand to sign autographs and pass out samples from their corporate sponsors.

That tour will be followed up by Britney Spears, and her opening act, Lindsay Lohan.

Republican Enablers Of Warrantless Eavesdropping

Republican Senators are determined to change the existing law that governs eavesdropping to enable the administration's currently illegal NSA warrantless wiretapping to pass legal muster.

The Bush administration could continue its policy of spying on targeted Americans without obtaining warrants, but only if it justifies the action to a small group of lawmakers, under legislation introduced yesterday by key Republican senators...

The bill would allow the NSA to eavesdrop, without a warrant, for up to 45 days per case, at which point the Justice Department would have three options. It could drop the surveillance, seek a warrant from FISA's court, or convince a handful of House and Senate members that although there is insufficient evidence for a warrant, continued surveillance "is necessary to protect the United States," according to a summary the four sponsors provided yesterday. They are Mike DeWine (Ohio), Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and Olympia J. Snowe (Maine).


This plan is really spurious. These apologists in the Senate actually have the nerve to propose that in cases in which the FISA court is not likely to grant a warrant, the spies would have the option to get approval for continuing the eavesdropping from a bunch of politicians who not only have to screw their pants on in the morning, but also don't know their asses from a hole in the ground.

It is far from clear whether the bill can win passage. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) -- whose panel plays a major role in the surveillance matter -- pointed his thumb down yesterday when asked about the measure. He said he particularly objects to letting the government "do whatever the hell it wants" for 45 days without seeking judicial or congressional approval.

The Senate intelligence committee's chairman, Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), who has defended the administration's actions, said seven members of a newly appointed subcommittee should be given time "to complete their review of the program before moving ahead with legislation." He added: "I am concerned that some of the procedural requirements included in the bill may limit the program's effectiveness."


The vile Roberts, in typical form, thinks that the proposed measures are too restrictive. That fuckhead should join John Yoo on the next flight to Pyongyang, since they both think that police state tactics are the proper method for keeping watch on people.

Details of the program, and Justice Department requests for exemptions from FISA warrants, would go only to the seven-member Senate subcommittee and a similar House intelligence subcommittee yet to be named. Both subcommittees would include Democrats and Republicans.

The legislation keeps the nuts and bolts of the program restricted to only trusted politicians.

Presumably ones who won't ask too many questions. Or leak the sordid details of the program. Because the legislation also has real teeth:

The bill introduced yesterday calls for fines of up to $1 million and prison terms of up to 15 years for those who disclose "classified information related to the Terrorist Surveillance Program," the administration's name for the NSA operation. The penalties would not apply to journalists.

And, as close readers of this story already know, the NSA program is already authorized to try to keep track of who is saying what to reporters.